Leah, Rachel & Sons

Good morning.

Today's reading is from Genesis twenty-nine, thirty-one through thirty-five.

When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.

And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, for she said, Because the Lord has looked upon my affliction, for now my husband will love me.

She conceived again and bore a son, and said, Because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also.

And she called his name Simeon.

Again she conceived and bore a son, and said, Now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.

Therefore his name was called Levi.

And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, This time I will praise the Lord.

Therefore she called his name Judah.

Then she ceased bearing.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Um, let's pray and then we'll move into today's text.

Holy Father, we thank you for gathering us together this the uh first Sunday of Holy Week.

Lord, as we consider Palm Sunday and your coming into Jerusalem, where you would set your face to march towards your sacrifice on our behalf.

Lord, let us consider the depth of your love towards us, the fickleness of our hearts that at one moment would praise you as king, and then at the next would shout for your crucifixion.

Lord, let us consider that even though our hearts are like that, and while our hearts are like that, you seek us.

Lord, let us remember that this week, as we consider this heading towards Easter through Good Friday.

Lord, let us remember, as we sang this morning, to preach the gospel to ourselves.

That it is the power of God for salvation to anyone who would believe.

Lord, would you help us believe more completely in your gospel even this morning?

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Today is the story.

Uh I named it Leah, Rachel, and sons.

And it's a moving company.

It's the story of the first moving company in uh scripture.

And they uh this is the story of it's a birth story.

It's actually 11 birth stories of the uh the sons who become the 12 tribes of Israel.

The the 12th son, I read it.

Here's how much your pastor knows about the Bible.

I I I read it and I was like, wait a minute, that's only 11.

I must have I'm I missed one, and then I reread it and I was like, there's only 11.

I got a bad copy.

And uh uh Benjamin is born later.

So I learned that this week.

Uh but it's the the story of the birth of the 11, uh, the first 11 of the 12 uh sons who become the 12 tribes of Israel.

And so this is a uh a sort of hewing of the foundation stones for the people who become the the object of God's redemption through history.

They they become a nation out of these 12 tribes of Israel.

And the story of these births, you might think, would be a wonderful celebration uh from first to last.

It's the the eleven sons who uh would become this glorious foundation stone, names that would uh label peoples and tribes that God would set his affection on for hundreds and hundreds of years following this.

And yet, and uh another thing that we might consider is you know, this is the an answer to this promise that God had given to Abraham that he would raise him up to become a mighty nation.

And Abraham just got Isaac, you know, as one son.

That's not it's hard to make a nation out of one son.

I have one son.

It's hard.

What are you trying to do with your sons?

No, it's not.

You never heard of YOLO?

Gonna try and make a nation out of your kid.

Then I uh then uh um we see uh Isaac has Jacob and Esau, and that's one for two.

And uh here we see 12 sons will come, 11 in this story alone.

And so this seems like we're finally starting to realize the glory of this expansion and of this promise really starting to take place.

So if I were writing the Bible and say this is going to be a beautiful moment, and where it's just gonna be a glorious birth story, and um uh there's there's 11 of them here, and it it's it's going to be this wonderful thing.

And instead, it's uh it's full of family drama and intrigue and backstabbing, and it is not a beautiful story uh at all, although there are uh a couple of beautiful moments within it.

Part of what I want us to see in this story is we're always trying to figure out who we are.

Um Buzzfeed is like a company whose half their business model is like telling you what Harry Potter house you're in, because we just want to know who we are.

And like what sorry, I just heard I just heard myself.

Everybody else heard that too, right?

Yeah, okay, great.

The uh um we take it, you know, we we know our Enneagrams, uh, we know our uh disk profiles, our our Myers Briggs, all of these things that we use to try and understand ourselves.

And and we often forget, you know, do you know your great-grandparents' names?

I'm actually curious.

Uh raise your hand if you know your great-grandparents' names.

I mean, uh look at how many hands aren't up.

You know, if we're 50-50.

Okay, so now go back at great great great grandparents.

Yeah, four.

Four people.

I it my my point is that we do all of this work to try and understand ourselves, and yet we don't know where we come from.

We treat ourselves as just these uh pure individuals with no historical trajectory, we're not a part of any historical story.

And today we need to face the fact we're a part of a family.

You are a part of a family, and that family that you are a part of with all its dysfunction is central to who you are.

There's no opting out.

There's no opting out.

You're part of a story.

It was happening before you got here, that's why you're here, and it will be happening after you're gone.

In order to understand ourselves and understand how Christ, how the gospel applies in our own lives in the particulars of who we are, we have to understand how it is that the gospel applies in the context of family, our parents, our siblings, how we fit in those roles.

The gospel applies there and has a lot to say about it, but it's often a context that we ignore.

In this story, there's things that can't be ignored.

The good news is that amidst all this dysfunction and the strange, complicated rivalries and intrigue that we see taking place through these 11 birth stories, we see that this is precisely the places that God loves to work, right in the midst of these things.

So in turning to face them, we're also opening ourselves up to see the very places that Christ loves to operate his redemption.

So we're going to look at the birth of Leah's first four sons, which has a really happy ending, but then we're going to look at the dysfunction that that happy ending causes throughout the rest of the family, and then we're going to see how it is that we as Christians live within our dysfunctional families through what Christ has done.

Does anybody want to learn how to live within their dysfunctional family?

By a show of hands?

Four?

Yeah, okay.

Same amount of people who know their great-great-grandparents.

Okay, so let's look at Leah's story first.

Genesis 29, 31.

When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.

Quick background to explain that verse.

Jacob intended to marry Rachel.

These are both sisters or both daughters of Laban.

And Rachel was the beautiful one.

And Leah was the ugly sister.

Jacob was tricked into marrying Leah and then worked an extra seven years to marry Rachel.

He loved Rachel.

He didn't love Leah.

So now we have these sister wives who are well, one of them is loved by the husband and the other is hated by the husband.

God recognizes this and operates uniquely in the midst of it.

When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.

One principle that we need to understand this story is that the Lord owns the womb.

The womb belongs to the Lord.

And so having children is like farming.

You know, you sow seed, and then there's nothing you can do to make it grow.

You can't make the seed grow.

You can participate, and there are things that, you know, if you don't do, there will be no growth.

But if you do those things, there's no guarantee.

Instead, you find yourself in a place of dependence upon the Lord.

But that doesn't mean we aren't invested in the outcome.

Just because it is the Lord's doesn't mean that the outcome isn't something that we are committed to seeing.

And here we see that there's good reason to be invested in the outcome.

It's it's first of all, it's the promise of God towards Jacob.

So these wives are participating in the promise of God to Jacob to be fruitful and multiply, to become a nation and a multitude of peoples, is realized in them giving birth to sons.

And secondly, another reason that we ought to be invested in this outcome is children are a good thing.

Children are a good thing.

Isn't it funny that that's like countercultural?

Children are not in the way.

Children are not an obstacle, children are not an uh something that inhibits your ability to self-realize or actualize your potential.

No, children are a good thing.

And so it's good to desire good things.

You can write that down.

It's good to desire.

I recommend tweets through my sermons.

I'm trying to trend.

It's good to desire good things.

And so when these wives and when Leah is desiring to have these sons, it makes sense.

It's good to desire those good things.

But here's what's unique about humans.

If it's good to desire good things, and God is a loving, caring father, then he should just give us good things, and then we'll have them, and that's great.

But we're very fallen, and we're a very corrupt type of people.

This is what's wrong, one of the many things that are wrong with the intentions of the prosperity gospel in all of its many forms, is it's because it assumes we know what's good for us.

We don't know what is good for us.

And so when God gives to us, we can't he can't give like in a in a sort of karmic cycle where he's just giving what we have either uh what we have deserved, you know, what goes around comes around.

That would be awful for us.

It would be, it would, we'd be living in hells, each of us.

And likewise, he can't give like a genie gives.

Because I don't know if you've ever seen a movie about a genie, but genies teach lessons, you know?

And you get some wishes, and then and then how does the genie teach you a lesson?

He gives you what you want.

And then it turns out being a catastrophe to get what you want.

And so if God is just going around teaching lessons like a genie, then we would likewise end up living in these terrible hells.

So what does God do?

Instead, he gives like a father gives to his children, which is that he gives to them in ways that are going to be good for them.

This is why you can have such freedom in what you ask for.

My wife and I, we were kind of joking, we've been praying for a home in this neighborhood.

Aim high.

And oh I was like praying, like heard of some friends that are like maybe selling a home in the area.

And so I prayed, Lord, just give me their house.

And you know, and Megan uh my wife was like, That like come on, like don't pray that.

Like they need a home too.

Um and I was like, Yeah, I know, but I'm not asking a genie.

Like, God's our father.

If it's bad for us, if it's bad for them, he just won't do it.

You know?

But the point is that we have a we have a freedom in our prayer in that regard.

Like, we're not uh uh we can ask in ways where we know we're asking a loving father who will say no for our good and will say yes for our good as well.

We're not dealing with with some sort of a genie.

Okay, so what we see here in the way that God relates to Leah through the birth of her first four sons is the action of a loving father who, by his giving, is seeking to change the heart of his daughter.

And the way that he changes the heart of his daughter is by drawing it towards him.

Because a heart that looks and is drawn towards and desires God above all else, that's the best condition our hearts can possibly be in.

So by God drawing us to himself, he's doing the most loving thing that he can possibly do.

So this next slide, it's kind of a complicated one, but I just took these uh four verses, which were too long, and I reduced them to the name of the son, what the son's name means in Hebrew, and then the sentence that Leah said when she had this son.

The a commentator that I've loved throughout this Genesis series is a man named Derek Kidner.

Uh and uh he says that these uh first four sons of Leah, these verses are some of the most pitiful verses in all of scripture.

I think that's true.

Her first son is born.

She names him Reuben, which just means, look, a son.

And then she says, Now my husband will love me.

So what she's saying is that the look, a son, is directed towards Jacob.

Remember, she's unloved by Jacob.

Look, a son, now my husband will love me.

He doesn't.

Her second son, she names Simeon, which means heard.

She says, the Lord heard that I am hated.

Perhaps this son will resolve that hatred.

The third son, she named Levi.

Levi means attached.

She says, now this time, my husband will be attached to me.

Because I have given him three sons.

Now there is a fourth son.

She names him Judah.

Judah means praise.

And she says, This time I will praise the Lord.

So in the naming of these sons, we see a transition take place in the heart of Leah.

So this is why God can't just give us what we want, and then we would expect we'll be satisfied.

What would Leah say she wanted?

I want sons.

I want these children.

But what were those sons?

They weren't good things in and of themselves, like a child is a good thing.

They were rather a means to the true end of what she really wanted.

She really wanted her husband.

Well, actually, we hear it in exactly the words.

She wants her husband to look at her.

She wants her husband to hear her.

And she wants her husband to be attached to her.

And so she might have thought, while these sons, while she was uh giving birth to them, she might have thought the Lord is on my side.

He is giving me exactly what I need to get what I really want.

He's giving me these sons, and these sons will allow me to finally be loved by my husband.

But then it must have felt maddeningly confusing because the Lord is so obviously on her side, right?

Giving her what she needs to get what she really wants, and then she gets what she needs and she doesn't get what she wants.

Her husband doesn't love her because of these things.

Her husband doesn't love her because of the sons.

There's no change in Jacob's heart.

While Leah was seeking the love of her husband above all else, she turned her children into a means to an end.

Did you know that parents, did you know that you can use your children as a means to an end, not as good things in themselves?

Children, which you're also those.

Some of you are aren't parents and you can still be children.

Did you know that you can be just a means to an end for your parents and not a good in itself?

Those things can happen.

So three times she receives what she thinks she needs to acquire what she wants, and then on the fourth time her gaze is lifted, and it's lifted up to the Lord.

Judah is received in praise.

She says, This time I will praise the Lord.

What happens is she realizes that the Lord has been the one who has been seeing her.

The Lord has been the one who has been hearing her.

The Lord has been the one who has attached himself to her.

And so she sees that the highest thing that I must seek in my life.

The one who I can truly depend on, the one whose love I really need at the heights of everything that I want and desire in my life is the love of the Lord.

And so with Judah, we see that Leah's heart has changed.

God has worked to lift her gaze.

And don't you see the difference that takes place?

When for Leah, the highest thing that she is desiring is the love of her husband, then she is caused to sacrifice her children on that altar.

They are merely a means to acquire her husband's love.

When the highest good that your life seeks is your career, then you will sacrifice your children on that altar.

You see the pattern?

Whenever you whatever you uh place as your highest good that that is not God, it will cause you, and it will in fact demand of you that you sacrifice good things in your life, God-honoring things in your life in order to satisfy its demands.

For Leah, it was the love of her husband.

Is being loved by your husband a good thing?

Yeah, yeah, it is.

It is.

That's isn't it uh wasn't a trap.

It's a good thing.

But when in her life it served as the ultimate thing, the one place of satisfaction, then it caused her to make terrible sacrifices.

But when God becomes the ultimate object of praise, the one whom her life arcs towards, then do you see how her children regain the position of children?

They Judah is just something to praise the Lord about.

Do you see the healing that comes into a family when God is placed as the highest aim, as the highest object of praise, the order, the relational order that is regained there?

So Leah is the ugly sister always playing second fiddle to Rachel.

She is now the sister who has been married off against her husband's will to her husband.

But through this process of these births, the Lord has changed her heart, working with her like a loving father works with her to demonstrate his love towards her, to recenter her identity on him.

And what we see is Leah's heart has changed.

Leah enters this place where no longer is she cursed by her husband's lack of love.

It's just a factor in her life, but it is not the defining factor of her life.

And so we see this growth and progression in Leah, where she develops.

We'll even see Leah, which is something I think we can't imagine happening before.

We see Leah later on in the story advocate for herself against Rachel.

I don't think Leah would have had the personhood, would have had the self to have been able to do that before, the one who was married off against her husband's will.

And yet she does that as her highest aim becomes the aim of the Lord.

So this is a good place to stop a sermon.

Because it's like, look, see, when your highest aim is the Lord, look at the order that comes back down into your life.

And it's a it's a wonderful thing when that order is regained in your own life.

And I could say something like, you too could have this order if God becomes the highest aim of your life.

And you too could bring order to your family.

And you'll live in this family paradise once you learn to make God the highest aim of your life.

And there will be peace and joy and no controversy at Thanksgivings or Christmases.

But this isn't where the story ends.

Because I don't know if you've ever been a part of a family, but that's not the way they work.

Leah made her highest aim the Lord.

She becomes, in modern vernacular, healthy.

You know, she's differentiated.

She's her own self because of her high esteem of the Lord.

I'll borrow all those terms.

So what happens next?

This obviously disrupts the family.

Genesis thirty, verse one.

When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister.

She said to Jacob, give me children or I shall die.

Okay.

Rachel doesn't see Leah become, you know, fruitful and this person whose identity has been become grounded in Christ, and think, wonderful for my sister.

No, this disrupts the whole pattern that the family had functioned in up until now.

Families, I'm going to riff on Edwin Friedman now, and we're going to learn a little bit about the way families work because we see this dynamic happening here.

Families, what keeps families together is homeostasis.

That's what families are always trying to seek is homeostasis.

And that's whatever pattern has maintained the family unity until now.

Typically, what's involved in a family maintaining homeostasis is an identified patient.

The identified patient is the person in the family who bears the symptoms for all of the dysfunction of the family system.

Leah is a perfect identified patient.

You know, she's the ugly sister, she's the one her husband doesn't want.

She might have complained a lot about that.

Rachel is the perfect standard bearer who can say, see, I'm the one who's accomplishing all these things.

I'm the one who's the most desirous in the community.

When I go out to the wells, all the uh, you know, the dowries are thrown at me and things.

I don't know how it worked then.

Homeostasis is not healthy functioning, it's ordinary functioning.

And families, family systems will always fight to return to ordinary functioning because that's the place that we experience the cohesion of family.

We know it works.

So when Leah is no longer the identified patient, but instead has uh seen the Lord is my identity.

And Rachel would say things perhaps like, yeah, Jacob doesn't, I think Jacob, you know, doesn't love you that much, or things would come through the grapevine and uh Leah would feel crushed and Rachel would comfort her, and that was the dynamic of their relationship.

Well, suddenly uh Leah isn't crushed by that type of thing anymore.

The Lord is with me.

I have wonderful children.

This isn't the life that I would have chosen for myself, but the Lord is with me and he'll see me through it.

She might have said things like that.

And what this does is it causes a terrible disruption for Rachel.

Now, here's what develops a new family emotional triangle, is what develops out of this process.

And so there's this issue, and the issue is between Leah and Rachel.

That's where the issue is.

It's between them, it's their emotional dysfunction because of the new health of Leah.

So do you think Rachel goes straight to Leah and is like, hey, let's work this out?

No.

That's not the way we do things.

Here's the basic law of an emotional triangle.

The basic law of emotional triangles is that when any two parts of a system become uncomfortable with one another, they will triangle in or focus upon a third person or issue as a way of stabilizing their own relationship with one another.

You've seen this already.

Jacob hates Leah.

Leah wants to be loved by Jacob.

The issue is there.

What does Leah do?

Triangle in her children to try and stabilize the relationship between Leah and Jacob.

See that makes sense?

The same thing happens here.

The issue is between Leah and Rachel.

So what does Rachel do?

She triangles in Jacob and says, Give me children, or I shall die.

Jacob responds like this.

Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel, and he said, Am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?

That's a response like, where is this coming from?

Because what's happening to him is he's being placed in a situation where he's being asked to resolve something that doesn't actually have anything to do with him.

The worst thing he could have done is bit and said, you know, this in what likely would have been even worse.

This problem's between uh you two.

Here's what would have been good.

Okay.

Here's what would have been good.

Look, Rachel, there's there's a lot here.

You know I love you.

I think that there's this is an issue between Leah and you.

And I want to really support you in working that out.

That would have been good.

That would have been good.

What would have been bad was if he said, this is between you and uh Leah, and I'm gonna fix it.

That would have been bad.

And guys do that all the time.

This is I can see the problem here, and I'm going to fix it.

Because you know what he would have done if he tried to fix that problem between them two, like involved himself in that.

Uh he would have cemented the problem.

Why?

Because he's already being treated as the means to stabilizing this dysfunctional relationship.

And so when he involves himself to try and fix it, he cements the dysfunctional relationship.

I I say this to inform you: if you find yourself doing that, you are not helping.

You are not helping.

Um this is something that you learn pastorally uh is that uh sometimes people will try and triangle you in to situations to tell them what to do uh to resolve the situation.

Do not tell them what to do.

That would not be helping.

Okay, so this appears as a conflict between Rachel and excuse between Rachel and Jacob.

It is actually a conflict between Leah and Rachel.

And so what Jacob does here is actually pretty appropriate, this response.

Am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?

He he basically just distances himself from the uh from being the person who can resolve this situation.

Like, look, that the reality is I can't help here.

That can be a very helpful thing to say.

The reality is I can't help here.

So more dysfunction enters.

Rachel and Rachel goes to her um uh servant and gives her servant to Jacob to have children on her behalf.

This type of surrogacy was common, um, although not ordained by the Lord.

And her servant Billah has two sons, Dan, and she names him Dan because Rachel says, God has judged me by having this son.

And then she has another son named Naphtali, which means wrestling.

She says, The Lord has seen my great wrestlings with my sister.

Who are Rachel's children about?

Rachel's children are about Leah.

Do you see that dysfunction?

She's not able to receive her children as good because they're her children.

And so her children are likely confused all the time because they're like, I'm not, I'm just trying to be a good child here.

But what their job really is, is to get back at Leah.

That's her children's real job.

I I want this.

The reason to move through a story like this is I want this, I want you to look at Genesis and see this is what it's like.

Isn't this what it's like?

Like I like you hear a story like this and you reflect back on your own family, and it's like, yeah, that's really what it's like, isn't it?

You know, we've been a long time out of the creation.

I don't know why I put creation in quotes.

I believe in it.

I preached it.

You can find the sermons, but we've been a long time out of what we would consider to be just the pure creation account.

And it's so much of what the creation account is doing is it's giving us eyes to see what is the world I live in like?

What is the world I live in really like?

But you see, throughout Genesis, that project never stops.

Like if you can interpret these scriptures, then you can interpret your life.

That's what the scripture is for.

It's giving us the lens to be able to interpret all of the complexities that we really face in life, even these familial ones, which are, which are some of them the most complex.

I just want you to see that in the word.

Leah.

Leah, you know, we already had her redemption story.

Leah falls into the same pattern that Rachel falls into.

And when she no longer has children, she gives her uh servant to Jacob as well.

And Jacob fathers two children, Gad, which Rachel name, which Leah names fortune.

She says, I've had the Lord has given me good fortune with this son, and Asher, which she says, the Lord has made me happy with this son.

Uh Gad fortune, Asher is happy.

Now we see, I I wish there were a way to make these stories more clean, but there just isn't.

I mean, it it these are messy stories.

That Leah is doing something wrong by giving her servant to Jacob.

And Jacob should, they shouldn't have sought to father their children in this way.

And yet, we see that Leah has still gained this benefit of having her heart fixed on the Lord.

Because who are Rachel, who are Leah's these children about?

They're about good gifts from the Lord, fortune and happiness.

So I wish I could make that more morally clean for you.

I can't.

Next, this sort of final pattern that we see take place of dysfunction moving through this family.

The pattern of internal dispute continues when Leah's oldest son, Ruben, goes out and finds some mandrakes.

Yeah, I think you can see what's coming.

No, there's no way.

Uh mandrakes were uh they were used for fertility.

So the this is like a guarantee of fertility.

And so she he gives them to her mother, his mother.

Which makes sense.

I mean, there's so much about this that just makes sense.

Like we could interpret this forever.

As we see these family dynamics.

Reuben, the oldest son, what is the oldest, what is that first son's job?

His name is Look a Son.

His job is to win over, uh, win his mother to his father.

That's his job, right?

That's what he was born to do.

And then what how is he living that out?

Mom, mom, I found these mandrakes.

I gotta get these to my mom.

My mom will love me when I win my father to her.

You see how these these things just live on?

And yet we think we can know ourselves by by a disc profile, by a by a Myers-Briggs, you know, because you know your Enneagram, but we don't know our families.

You you're gonna have to know your family.

I wish there were a shortcut, believe me.

But there's not.

This is where we live.

This is what it's like out here.

Okay, so Rachel catches wind of the mandrakes and uh comes to Leah and says, Give me some of your son's mandrakes.

For the fertility, of course.

Leah advocates for herself.

She said to her, verse 15, Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband?

Would you take away my son's mandrakes also?

Rachel said, Then he may lie with you tonight in exchange for your son's mandrakes.

She sells her husband to Leah for a night for the fertility in the mandrakes that Reuben, Leah's son, has and offers.

Now, the fertility is in the mandrakes, right?

Rachel and Leah are both barren at this point.

Leah gets one night with Jacob.

They have a kid.

No mandrakes needed.

God has a funny sense of humor, doesn't he?

Verse 30, 22, then God remembered Rachel and God, oh, excuse me, I skipped a bit.

So she bears two more sons, Issachar and Zebulun.

These uh those names are wages because he was bought with wages.

And honor is Zebulun.

Okay.

Rachel up to this point has had no children of her own throughout this whole process.

No, no children of her own.

There's there's ten children that have been born here, four to concubines, and six to Leah.

Genesis 30, verses 22 through 24.

Genesis 30:22–24

Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb.

She conceived and bore a son, and said, God has taken away my reproach.

And she called his name Joseph.

Sound familiar one, saying, May the Lord add to me another son.

Okay, now look at Rachel's story.

Rachel's is a story, and this is amazing how God works.

Rachel had no long suffering in her life before this event with her sister.

And now, throughout this whole process, these these years and years and years of barrenness and seeing her sister be fruitful, she has this experience of deep long suffering.

And then what does she name her son when she finally has him?

Um, Joseph means to add to.

May the Lord add to me another son.

Don't you see what that is?

That's hope.

That's hope in the Lord.

She receives a son and she's already hoping for the Lord to continue giving beyond what she sees.

Where does hope come from?

Hope comes from long suffering.

That's what makes hope in a person.

And so, Rachel, through this process, we see what has God been doing through this process for her?

He's been making her a person of hope.

Rachel and Leah, they both have these narratives, these stories of God working through this process, the pain and the difficulty and the blessing, but he was always working to guide their hearts towards him.

And how do you interpret that when you're in the midst of it?

I don't know.

Like when Leah had just had Simeon, and we see her being hated by Jacob, and at the point of Simeon, she's like, would my husband just hear me?

If we were to go and comfort her, we'd probably think, like, yeah, he should just hear you.

You know, we wouldn't have been able to say in the midst of that, well, look, you've got two more sons, and God's going to do a radical change in your heart after the fourth son.

It's going to blow your mind.

You're going to finally not be enslaved to your husband's, uh to your desire for your husband's love, and instead you'll find your satisfaction most completely in the love of the Lord.

We couldn't have been able to say that.

Instead, through this, we need to learn and see how it is that we as Christians live in the midst of these family stories that are wildly complicated.

And that even when we experience the true growth and sanctification of the Lord, of our identities being firmly grounded in the work of Christ and the health in our lives that comes from that, when we realize that that is not the means to family peace, but is oftentimes the means to more family disruption.

And then we need to hope in the midst of that, that this family disruption that's caused by our growth in the Lord, that we can learn to trust the Lord, that He is able to bring more patterns of redemption, even in the midst of that disruption.

We become people of hope.

There's a sense in which, just like narratively, we could see Leah becomes a person who is grounded in the Lord, and then Rachel becomes the person who is hopeful as the sort of other side of that disruption of becoming grounded in the Lord.

And then as Christians, what does this teach us?

We need to be both.

We need to be people who are firmly grounded in the Lord, present in our families, and then hopeful in the midst of the disruption that that causes.

The answer to this is in the midst of the story.

Because the most famous name out of this is Joseph, and he is the one that the rest of the text of Genesis will center around.

And then Rachel will have Benjamin, and he will become this sort of surrogate Joseph for Jacob and this terrible bartering that takes place as Joseph becomes idolized by Jacob.

The dysfunction does not end.

But the one to look at, the son to look at, isn't Joseph.

Because Joseph isn't the one through whom the promise continues.

He's not the one through whom the promise is realized.

The one through whom the promise is realized is Judah.

Judah, the fourth son of Leah, the one whose name means praise, the one where her heart converts and says, This time I will praise the Lord.

And it is from Judah that we receive the true child of promise, the lion of the tribe of Judah.

Listen to how the names ring out in Genesis 49, when they're blessed as the sons of Israel.

Genesis 49, 10, this is about Judah.

The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler staff from between his feet until tribute comes to him, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

This is the highest honor of any of the sons of Israel, and it is because this is a part of the messianic promise.

The one who comes through Judah is Jesus.

And what does Jesus do?

He enters directly into the dysfunction, bears it upon himself, and rescues us.

He gives us hope that in the midst of this dysfunction, he is able to do his work.

Now, here's the hard part, Christian.

Don't confuse yourself with Jesus.

What you need is to see Jesus as the highest aim, the greatest good in your life.

Because consider this Jesus is the perfect son.

He's the perfect family member.

You know, he's the one who does, he's the one who actually does all the healing.

So when you aim at him, when you aim at Jesus, then you are standing under this unthinkable burden and this unthinkable weight of being the one who is meant to bring salvation to your family.

And do you know what you'll do when you do that?

To borrow Friedman's language, you'll triangulate yourself in and you'll cement the dysfunction of your family.

Because you aren't Jesus.

Jesus is Jesus.

So do you know who you need to be in your family?

You need to be saved by Jesus.

That's what your family needs.

Someone who is saved by Jesus such that they see, you know, this dysfunction?

This is the great revelation of becoming an adult.

You know that uh toxic system that I was a victim of?

I was a part of it.

That's called adulthood.

And seeing that I I can't be the savior of my family because I'm a part of this thing.

What I need is to be saved by Jesus.

And then I participate as one who needs constant forgiveness, constant grace, constant mercy, constant rescue, and then needs to be able to extend and offer that same depth of grace that I have received from him.

And then you aim it at that Christ by the power of the gospel, and you see that all kinds of things will be disrupted.

And yet, in the midst of that disruption, you hope that the same work that Christ has done in you and in your heart that he offers freely to those around you.

And you consider that he did not work in your heart because you were smarter, or because you were more open-minded, or because you didn't have these same patterns that you know your parents, of course, don't see because of something that you see because we all are like we all have this absurd amount of therapeutic language now.

She's like, it's like giving, I don't know, it's like we're all carrying around way too much information.

Hot take.

And we use that as a means to just look down on on people.

We can't do that.

Not when the answer is the one who is who is Judah, the one who went to the cross to bear the sins, not just for those who sin against us, but for us ourselves.

When our identity is in him as the rescuer, then we receive it and we give what we've received to our family, which is that grace, and we're hopeful that the God who worked in us will be able to work in our families also.

Does that dynamic make sense?

Do you see that?

Okay, let's end there then and uh see if there are any questions.

This dynamic obviously occurs within the parent-child dynamic when one child comes and tattles on the other.

Do you have any wisdom on how to empower our children to engage each other in resolving conflict instead of inserting ourselves as the solution?

Um like a a helpful thing.

Oh with this just kind of like understanding this dynamic, this is just helpful, especially for a church, so it's helpful for understanding gossip, is uh oh when Peter comes to tell you about Paul, it doesn't have to do with Paul, it has to do with you and Peter.

Do you see that?

So, yeah, when Peter comes to you to talk about Paul, it doesn't have to do with Paul, it has to do with you and Peter.

That's because Paul at that point is being used to stabilize the relationship between you and Peter.

See, it's just a good rule of thumb.

Uh, when somebody starts talking to you about other people, you you've got to be cognizant of like, this is why gossip is so dangerous, right?

Because then the only way that a family or a church can function is um by having people within it that we uh oppress and and demonize.

That's the opposite of a uh a people that are living by grace.

Sorry, I this is not exactly at the question, but I want to say this.

In order for a society of sinful people to be able to operate with one another, we have to have a scapegoat.

There is no uh group that functions without one.

There isn't a group that functions without a scapegoat.

This is what preserves the left-right dynamic in our culture is scapegoating one another.

And that that's uh that's homeostasis, by the way.

We don't want that to change.

That's we will fight to not change that.

Um Christ took on our sin.

Okay, we are forgiven by him.

Do you see how that reconciles us to one another?

So we we no longer tear at one another's flesh because his flesh was torn for us.

Do you see how that that without that at your top, you can't have a healthy, functioning society or family.

But with that at the top, you can.

Oh, as far as the particulars of parenting advice for how to not reconcile that, there's you I'll just say a couple of things.

One, you are the voice of authority, so it does ultimately stop with you.

And the way that you approach that uh needs to be one of rallying around the strength of your children to reconcile together, uh, rather than uh creating a um a sort of codependency of one against the other, one with you against the other, um, which we want to do as parents.

You know, we aren't neutral towards our children all the time.

We love some more than others.

Uh, and that plays out in terrible ways.

So it's important to know about our hearts.

Okay, let's take communion.

I preached so long.

My wife is not gonna be happy.

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Families operate on family legends.

The stories that families tell over and over again, which support their identity.

Reuben, you're called Luca's son.

Simeon, you're named Attached.

You know, those become who they are in those family stories.

Your family has stories like that.

This is our family story.

That the head of our family, the head of the church, is the one who gave himself up for us that we might be forgiven.

This is our story, the one that holds us together, creates our identity.

So come to the table, Christian, to take part in that family story.

It's a way of participating in the healing and reconciliation, even of your own family.

But it starts with him.

Holy Father, I pray that as we partake of this meal, that you would show us our truest identity in you, that our truest home is the home that you are preparing for us.

And that here the suffering that you have gone before us and taken is something that we might participate in joyfully with a hope that the work you have done in our hearts might be done even in the hearts of our families, also.

Lord, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.